Mobile payment is an alternative payment method that allows consumers to use a mobile device (e.g. such as a smart phone) to purchase goods or services, instead of using cash, cheque or credit card. Mobile payment processing has been the “holy grail” of mobile commerce since the advent of the cell-phone.
However, the lack of efficient and easy-to-use mobile payment processing solutions has heretofore relegated the mobile payment processing market to predominantly the purchase of downloadable items such as ringtones and music. Although many companies have tried, no one company has yet introduced a comprehensive mobile payment processing technology that has seen wide spread acceptance by either merchants or consumers.
In addition, consumers' concerns over the security of mobile payment systems have hindered the widespread adoption of such technology. In traditional credit card or debit card based Point of Sale systems, when a consumer makes a purchase, the consumer's sensitive payment account information is generally processed between a merchant's POS terminal and a Payment Platform (such as that of a credit card company, bank or other financial institution). Further, the consumer is typically required to enter personal identification numbers (“PINs”), or other such verification information such as passwords, on the merchant's POS terminal. While such technology is widely adopted, in the case of mobile payment systems in particular, there remains a need for a mobile payment system which can provide for enhanced security by reducing much of such payment processing functions from the merchant POS terminal.
In particular, providing one entity with some control in how their personal financial information is provided to directly another entity (e.g. between consumer and merchant) involved in the funds transfer has so far been elusive. This inability to involve more entity control of the funds transfer between entities while at the same time streamlining the amount of time and information entities must share with each other during funds transfer has effectively relegated experience in online electronic direct funds transfer to that of yesterday rather than the future. In particular, barcodes have been used in an effort to speed up the customer shopping experiences by providing merchant terminals information about the product when scanned through a checkout scanner, i.e. the price and brief description of the product that the barcode is attached/applied to. However, any use of barcodes outside of the customer shopping experience, other than as a look up service for a price of a product on a product by product basis, is simply not available.
Further, mobile payment technologies have been contemplated using mobile devices that utilize Radio-Frequency Identification (“RFID”) and/or Near Field Communication (“NFC”) technologies as the means for identifying a Consumer/Consumer's account. However, with such devices, possession equals ownership, meaning that a lost device can potentially be used by a fraudster to make unauthorized purchases. There is a need therefore to provide for a mobile payment system having enhanced security features.
At the same time, developments in the field of mobile commerce are being facilitated by improved functionality and features available on mobile devices, and by such functionality and features becoming more commonplace on current mobile devices. For example, cell phones, smart phones and tablet computers nowadays are commonly integrated, multi-functional devices. In addition to their core, basic functionality, they will often have, or can be configured to have, web-enabled functionality, various other communication capabilities (e.g., e-mail, text, wi-fi, etc.), camera functions, scanning and graphical image handling functionalities and other capabilities. Graphical interfaces of desktop computers, including image processing capabilities, have also become more advanced in their functionality and provided features. However, to date, the direct funds transfer experience between entities (either in person or online) has not benefited from these advanced functionality and provided features of desktop GUIs and mobile devices.